[Gd-hackers] Bug in the Dylan Reference Manual?

[Chris Page]

On Jun 3, 2007, at 14:08 PM, Markus Fenske wrote:

> So either "#-word" should be uppercase in
> http://www.opendylan.org/books/drm/Lexical_Grammar and
> http://www.opendylan.org/books/drm/Phrase_Grammar or it should be  
> defined in
> http://www.opendylan.org/books/drm/Phrase_Grammar before beeing used.

I'm not certain what the answer should be here. It seems that #-word  
is only in the lexical grammar because it is referenced by TOKEN, but  
TOKEN isn't referenced anywhere in the phrase grammar, despite being  
in all-caps. In fact, TOKEN isn't referenced anywhere in the BNF;  
"token" is mentioned only informally in the text.

I think it's clear that the BNF appendix isn't a strict, minimal  
grammar, and it contains some informally worded parts that are there  
primarily to aid the expositive text. It may be that "#-word" is  
explicitly not all-caps, despite the comment in the BNF General  
Notes, since it's mentioned in the text as "#-word".

If "#-word" were changed to "#-WORD" in the BNF, the next question  
is: How does this affect references to "#-word" in the text? Should  
it be changed to "#-WORD" or even "#-WORD(BNF)"? (Where "(BNF)" is  
"BNF" in all-caps, subscripted, as is done in a number of places in  
the DRM.)

I'd like to see if Andrew Shalit has anything to say about this  
particular issue, or about BNF issues like this generally.

It's probably best to post the original message to comp.lang.dylan  
and have the discussion there.

-- 
Chris Page - Dylan Programmer

  Open Source Dylan Compilers: <http://www.opendylan.org/>